Breast Augmentations and Lifts – Should They be Separated?

Many women are dissatisfied with more than one aspect of their breasts, and as women age (even into their thirties), breast size and sagging are the two most common complaints. While ordinary logic tells us that it would be sensible to do both breast lift surgery and breast implant surgery at the same time (saving money and recovery time in the process), this is usually not the technique which gets the best outcome for many women. We look at both the pros and cons of combining breast implant and lift surgeries.

Why combine?
Every part of our practical experience tells us that it makes sense to organize to have all the plastic surgery that you will want done completed at the same time. There are obvious benefits to this approach:

• The surgeon needs to be paid for their time, and consultations, preparation and anaesthesia can all be reduced overall by combining two procedures.
• Recovery time might be two weeks per surgery. Combining the two means a total of two-three weeks recovery, rather than at least four.
• The disruption to your life is much less – everything is over and done with at once.

Why separate procedures?

The basic reason to separate procedures is to ensure that the final result is as predictable and close to your wishes as possible, and reduce the need for revision breast surgery. When your breasts are being operated on, the tissue and muscle is under a lot of trauma. What looks like an optimal result when the surgeon is working on them may turn out to be quite different than either you or he expect, when the healing process is complete. Here are the basic reasons that separating the procedure is the preferred tactic:

• The breast implant and lift combination is an extremely complex procedure
• It is very difficult to work to plan when the tissue is already traumatized
• The results are much more difficult to predict
• The risk of excessive scarring is much greater with the combination procedure
• The risk of infection is much greater than with either breast lift surgery or breast implant surgery alone
• With all of the above factors combined, the chance that you’ll need to go back (unexpectedly) for revision surgery is much higher

Sometimes one is enough
Even though there are two things that women want to ‘fix’ about their breasts when they are considering an implant-lift combo, one procedure or the other may completely satisfy them. Patients that begin with the breast lift may find that the surgery provides an improvement in shape that achieves what they thought an increase in size was needed for.

Surgical choice difficulties
There are quite a number of different types of breast lift surgery techniques (mastopexy), including periareolar mastopexy, vertical mastopexy, inverted T mastopexy and combinations of these. It is difficult to tell which will give the best result until surgeons have seen what affect the implant has on your breasts … and making decisions on the fly is never an ideal surgical tactic!

It may take a little more time and a little more money, but separating your breast lift surgery and breast implant surgery will almost certainly give you better results in the long run. And breasts are for life!

How to Determine the Best Implant Size at Home

After the decision to get breast implant surgery, the next most important decision you will make is how big you want your new breasts to be. Do you go Dolly-size and make the most of the surgery opportunity to get a new and completely different figure, or do you just go a little bigger, but keep it natural? There are physical factors to take into account as well (for example, your body must be able to comfortably carry the weight and move around the projection of your new breasts), and your breast implant surgery doctor will guide you through those and offer their opinion. Today we are looking at some aspects of the breast implant sizing equation, and how you can determine how big you want to go.

Using photographs
Start by researching the internet to find a woman similar build to yourself, with a breast size that you would like to have. See if you can find several different angles to bring to your breast implant surgery doctor. This shouldn’t be difficult – if there’s one thing the internet has no shortage of, it is pictures of breast! You should also bring photographs of yourself without clothing on your breasts, both in profile and front-on, to help your surgeon gauge the size that will best suit you.

Factors that go into the decision
It isn’t wishes along that go into your breast implant sizing decision – your doctor has to consider various physical factors and how they will interact with your new breasts. These include:

• The shape of your chest
• The size of your ribs
• The current shape and dimensions of your breasts, including volume and width
• Pregnancy history – women who have been pregnant are more likely to have enough spare skin to be ‘filled up’ with an implant. Your pregnancy history may affect the way the breast implant surgery is done, also.
• Sternal depth
• Height and weight

How to tell what size will be best for you

Unfortunately breast implants don’t come from the manufacturer labelled ‘Pamela Anderson’, ‘Jenna Jameson’, ‘Reese Witherspoon’, etc. They come marked with volumes, which can be difficult to translate mentally to a picture of how your new breasts will actually look and feel. Here is a common breast implant sizing method for determining what volume will suit you.

• Grab some pantyhose and rice or bird seed, a measuring cup that indicates volume in cubic centimetres, and an unpadded bra
• Fill the pantyhose with around a cup of rice, loosely packed to allow movement. Tie a loose knot in the top to stop it spilling.
• Repeat with the same volume on the other breast
• Or, if your are having breast implant surgery to correct an unevenness in size, adjust the size to what looks natural to you.
• Wear the stocking and rice setup for at least a few hours – a couple of days will actually be best.
• Bring the pantyhose still filled with rice and the bra to your breast implant surgery initial consultation.

Sources:
http://www.cosmeticsurgeryint.com.au/breast-implant-sydney/breast-augmentation-sizing.php
http://www.implantforum.com/size.html
http://www.babycenter.com/0_breastfeeding-after-breast-augmentation-implants_8680.bc